Chiclayo - Peru

As soon as we left the bus station I was struck by the energy of Chiclayo. Forget being awake all night on a bus, I felt ready to go for a plod around the city. Perhaps a shower was in order first though!


On all our travels, I can’t recall a place giving such an overall feeling of happiness. Peruvians, so far, seem to be the friendliest people we’ve encountered on our journey south from Mexico. Here people seem to spend much of their time with a smile on their face. I’m yet to find out if this applies to the whole country, or if it is a special combination of a pretty city and many hours of sunshine that keeps people in good spirits. And they all want to strike up a conversation, even more so than Colombians. They’ll take the chance that you might well turn out to be from the US and come up for a chat. Whether you’ll understand them is a different matter - its almost like a different language from Ecuador. But anyway, for whatever reason (no doubt a political one) I’m pretty confident I won’t see any “gringos go home’ graffiti here.

The other striking thing about our first day in Peru was the food. We had heard rumours that the set menu cuisine varies a great deal more when you get to this country. Apparently it is not always the standard dish of rice, a small piece of fried meat, fried banana and salad/beans – apart from Mexico serving everything with hot sauce to try to make it interesting, most countries haven’t strayed from these ingredients, and trust me, it gets pretty boring. But that’s a sacrifice you make if you want to eat cheaply.

No, Peru (so far) has torn up the script when it comes to cheap set menus. They have introduced two things; higher quality food, and choice. I’m not so sure how they’re managing it, but they are able to provide four or five different main dish choices. And they’re serving up things like chicken fillets, fish fillets, things in sweet and sour sauce…amazing! They also have an alternative for starters too. For example, you can have something called Papa a la Huancaina which comprises; a bed of lettuce, on top of which is a lump of mashed potato, covered in a hollandaise type sauce and on top, a piece of hard boiled egg. Maybe that description doesn’t sound all that nice, but it really is. It certainly beats a hot soup when its 30degC outside!

Oh and just a word on soups. It’s nice that they use animal parts for stock - for the flavour and all that. But do they have to leave it in the soup when they serve it? Can anything spoil the appetite more than delving into your soup bowl to bring up a chicken foot on your spoon?

Anyway, perhaps I’ve ranted about food enough. It is something I have felt strongly about while travelling though. I don’t function well when hungry and sometimes what you purchase can be so disappointing, you find yourself eating solely to fill a hole. I enjoy my food. Yeah, I know, it’s a tough life hey!

It seemed there is at least one taxi for every person in the Chiclayo. The streets are full of these little yellow Daewoo things, with the drivers constantly beeping their horns believing every person on the street to be their next fare. And I don’t know how we didn’t see a crash every five minutes either. The driving is so terrible and risky it’s comical!
So, enjoying the food, the weather (hot but with a cool refreshing breeze) and the people, we felt right at home in Chiclayo. The city seemed to buzz at all times of the day and especially at night. We’ve been so used to city centres being pretty dead in the evenings unless it’s the weekend. But this was Chiclayo on a Monday night, and we could hardly move down the pavement for people going out to eat and drink.